


Now Long Past, But Not To Be Forgotten

by emrisemrisemris



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Adrien Victus is very old, Garrus is something important in the turian government, M/M, Rain, Shepard is quietly retired, looking out the window in a city that isn't quite home, many years post ME3, the end of an era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-30
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-11-08 12:03:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20835155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emrisemrisemris/pseuds/emrisemrisemris
Summary: Even so much later, he overwhelmed too easily; better to think of other things. He paid, instead, very close attention to a droplet on the point of overtaking another one on its passage down the window.Quite unexpectedly, his terminal - abandoned on the desk on the other side of the room - began to buzz with the green light of an incoming call. He considered not answering it, and then with an inward sigh acknowledged that anybody calling at three in the morning probably had a reason, and fumbled his way through the menus to pick up the call from his omni-tool. "Shepard.""Oh, thank the spirits," said the Primarch's adjutant, with audible relief. "I need Garrus, urgently; have you got him?"





	Now Long Past, But Not To Be Forgotten

It was raining hard, had been raining hard all night, the steady downpour kicking up the white dust of Palaven into thin grey mud. Ira slept and woke and slept and woke, as he sometimes did when the hotchpotch of damaged systems he insisted on calling a body developed new and interesting errors, but took some comfort in the sound of the rain, which even in this age of wonders still largely did what it had done for a billion years.

The fifth time of waking, after he'd lain staring at the dim ceiling for an uncertain interval without slipping back to sleep, he got up and went out to the main room. Garrus was a curled lump under the covers beside him, dead to the world; Ira opted not to disturb him, disentangling himself from the bedclothes as adroitly as he could.

A glass of water and two painkillers later, he sat in the armchair nearest the floor-to-ceiling window, lights still out, and watched the rain. 

Their windows looked out over central Cipritine, and the towers of glass and silvered alloy that had left the Grissom embassage speechless half a century before. Here and there the spaces of those that had been torn down gaped like the sockets of pulled teeth, more intrusive for their absence. Ira took in the skyline for the the however-many-thousandth time, the busy civic district not quite dead even at this hour of the morning, and the rain pattering down over it all with quiet relentless force, and felt the old familiar ache, a pang without a referent, for some dreamed-of other city. He'd not been born on Earth, or even on planet; hadn't _seen_ Earth till he was seventeen, had spent less than two years of his life there against ... eight, now (and that brought an incredulous swelling of warmth with it, sitting alongside the ache with obstinate incongruity), on his grey adopted Palaven, and yet he still missed it, or what he'd imagined of it. 

He watched, as if from above, his train of thought approaching the turn-off marked _London, _and made a conscious production of re-routing it. Even so much later, he overwhelmed too easily; better to think of other things. He paid, instead, very close attention to a droplet on the point of overtaking another one on its passage down the window. 

Quite unexpectedly, his terminal - abandoned on the desk on the other side of the room - began to buzz with the green light of an incoming call. He considered not answering it, and then with an inward sigh acknowledged that anybody calling at three in the morning probably had a reason, and fumbled his way through the menus to pick up the call from his omni-tool. "Shepard."

"Oh, thank the spirits," said the Primarch's adjutant, with audible relief. "I need Garrus, urgently; have you got him?"

Adrien Victus ran the turian state; Aukke Neotoros ran Victus' life. The adjutant had been the jewel of Strat Ops, co-ordinating supply chains for three planets, before the Primarch had headhunted em for his personal staff; ey were, Ira thought, one of the most dauntingly _organised _people he'd ever met.

"I've got him," Ira confirmed, and shoved himself out of the chair to start slowly back towards the bedroom. "Why didn't - ah. Yeah. I know he set his terminal to do not disturb earlier; he must not have switched it back." He was briefly grateful that the sodium monochrome of the display wouldn't show his blush.

"Honestly," Aukke said, with the sound of typing in the background, "the nerve of him, thinking he gets to have a personal life in this job. I am so sorry for waking you up."

"You didn't; it's fine." Ira made it back to the bedroom, door sliding back silently at his approach, and sat down heavily on the end of the bed. He reached for the nearest lump of husband and shook him gently. "G, wake up."

"Shepard?" Garrus said blearily, then levered himself up on one elbow, taking in the open door and glowing rectangle of Ira's terminal. "Aukke. What's wrong?"

Ira saw em swallow and compose emself in the display, before ey said, very quietly but without any shake to eir subvocals, "Adrien died a few hours ago. Cardiac, in his sleep."

Garrus swore, the kind of barrack-room language that even Shepard, with all they'd been through together, had only heard occasionally, and sat up properly, finding his visor off the bedside table and wrestling it on. "Right. You've called Commodore Herheria?"

Ira had to cup his forearm with the other hand to keep the call screen at a sensible height, and was grateful for the painkillers.

"She's on the first ship she could get out of Taetrus; she'll be here tomorrow." Garrus was dressing, snarling at recalcitrant buckles and buttons, as Aukke went on. "It's under control, don't worry about it. I need you at the Plaza for the honour guard."

Garrus stopped in his tracks, one glove on, one off, and swung round to stare at the orange window. "I'm not -"

"Garrus Vakarian," Aukke said sombrely, clearly reading off something in front of em, "who was with me when I became Primarch, for his service now long past but not to be forgotten."

The words of the old Primarch's will, in the flowery legalese that Ira's translator had rendered into a kind of antique poetry, hung in the long silence that followed like the smell of rain.

"I'll be there," Garrus said at last. "As soon as I can."

"I'm sending an aircar," Aukke said, back to eir usual crisp competence. "Five minutes. See you."

The call cut off, and Ira gratefully dropped his arm, then, after a moment, lay back on the bed on top of the rumpled covers. His back - didn't precisely hurt, not under the meds, but was making its displeasure known. 

After maybe one of the five minutes, Garrus sat down on the edge of the bed next to Ira, more or less clothed, put one gloved hand absently over Ira's, and said softly "Doesn't quite feel real."

"Guess he wasn't actually immortal," Ira said.

There had been a string of assassination attempts, largely by ultratraditionalists, in the early, unsettled years post-reconstruction. Ira knew for a fact that Garrus had personally thwarted at least two that had never made it as far as the news. 

"Guess nobody is," Garrus said, bleakly philosophical, and stood back up, stretching. He cocked his head in silent invitation; Ira nodded, _yes, _and as he sat up Garrus scooped him up in both wiry arms and carried him out into the main room. It was much quicker than walking, these days: Garrus no longer had the ludicrous limber strength of his youth, but Ira no longer had most of his original bones, so it still came out in the turian's favour.

Garrus set him down on the arm of the sofa and grabbed his work bag, sweeping his datapad and an assortment of paperwork off the desk into it; after a moment's hesitation he emptied the stash of energy drinks in the bottom drawer into the bag as well.

"You know Victus did the full protective father thing at me when we got back together?" Ira said, as Garrus hunted for outdoor layers.

"I'm sorry," said a muffled voice from the hallway, "what?"

Ira shrugged. "Or protective ... commander, I guess. Said you were one of his best officers and if I broke your heart he'd make sure I lived to regret it."

"From a turian commanding officer that's practically a welcome with open arms," Garrus said, re-emerging. "How have you never mentioned this before?"

"Forgot, I guess," Ira said, and Garrus looked briefly, embarrassedly away. The two of them had worked out their own rhythm to fit around Ira's limitations, but the patchy amnesia remained a field of little potholes that could only be found by falling into them. "It was a long time ago."

"Twenty years," Garrus said, voice softening.

"Nineteen and a half," Ira contradicted him.

"Pedant."

"It's pronounced 'engineer'," Ira said, which made Garrus hiss at him in mock affront, and got awkwardly to his feet at the sight of movement outside the window.

A sleek, dark government aircar had peeled out of the sparse but visible east-west traffic lane, and was now coming smoothly down towards their balcony. Ira checked his omni-tool: four minutes, and fifty-one seconds.

"I'll call you as soon as I can," Garrus said, and pressed his forehead briefly to Ira's. He was still sleep-hot, the warmth lingering on Ira's skin even after they stepped apart. "Don't wait up."

"Come back alive," Ira said, the old half-joke still funny after twenty years from the sheer ridiculous improbability that they had lived long enough not to take it seriously any more, and Garrus laughed.

Ira went back to the armchair as Garrus headed out onto the balcony, shoving his helmet on against the weather; a brief but shockingly loud gust of wind sent a spatter of water onto the floor in the moments the door was open, and then he and the aircar and the noise were all gone together, and it was only Ira and the rain.


End file.
